


A Shock of Blue

by mintletters16



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, POV Rio (Good Girls), Pre-Season/Series 01, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-23 19:15:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19157263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintletters16/pseuds/mintletters16
Summary: He can tell she’s all doe eyes and compliance until she’s not. He wants to hit those hard lines, those jagged ones she’s hiding beneath just to prove he’s not the only one who’s a little fucked up.He wants to see her break.She’s looking at him like he’s on the brink of madness. He thinks maybe he is.- A moment in time before Beth becomes Mrs Boland and before Rio becomes King -





	A Shock of Blue

_What are you doing, man? No, stop, I can explain!_

_(He pulls out the gun)_

Hail pelts his face as he walks briskly away from the body he’s just put two bullets in. One to the knee to take him down. One between his eyes to take him out.

The storm drowns out the sound of his staccato heartbeat but does nothing to silence the echoes of   the boy’s pleas to _wait, please, just give me one more day,_ nor the whimpering sound his throat expelled when his cries were met with no mercy.

Out of the warehouse, his feet pounding on the concrete, hands quaking in the aftershock of pulling the trigger twice, Rio tries to block the boy’s voice from reverberating inside his skull.

Tries to still the frantic energy he feels thrumming through his veins. Tries to stop his legs from giving out underneath him and his stomach from heaving out all the guilt-soaked anguish currently churning and twisting and breaking his soul.

_Tell him I’m s-sorry, I’ll get it b-back, I swear!_

_(He releases the safety catch)_

Rio is good with numbers, with algebra and equations. Punch in the right figures, avoid stupid mistakes, keep everything balanced and you get the desired outcome every single time.

It’s why Rio is also good at the game. He understands the code: no debt can go unpaid. And if you can’t pay it off with money, you pay with your life. The rules never change; it’s medieval, really.

Keep everything balanced. It’s so fucking simple.

_(Bang!)_

_Please!_

There’s no room for apologies, or second chances, or dumb rookie fuck-ups like losing half the pills you were supposed to move because you picked up the wrong gym bag from the locker room.

No pills, no cash. No cash, no profit. No profit? Refer back to code.

_(Bang!)_

It’s nothing more than restoring the balance. Order is something Rio respects. Craves, even.

After all, discipline is what got him where he is today; from fifteen slipping green between hands on street corners that fit him like snug pockets, to seventeen shifting snow in neighbourhoods too grand to call his own.

But he worked hard. Rose up. Painfully slowly, but Rio is as patient as he is ambitious.

And now nineteen, finally being used less for his labour and more for his mind. To delegate drops and oversee the local distro.

And, as it transpires, to administer the code.

 _Do it tonight_.

The words that had floated around in his skull all day now violently collide with the echoes of the screams he’d pulled out of the boy he left bleeding out three blocks behind.

It had to be done. He had to follow orders. _He had to set limits_. What good is a code if nobody dies by it?

Still.

The screams persist and his head is bursting at the seams from the sound. It’s fitting, he thinks wryly, that he feels his brain will explode after just blowing someone else’s out across some walls and a floor. Balance.

Walking through the doors of a diner that looks every bit as decrepit as he feels – with peeling black leather seats and dim, dingy lighting – Rio barely makes it to a back booth before his thoughts begin to squeeze around every oxygen molecule in his bloodstream and suffocate him.

The smell of bleach permeating the air that absorbed the boy’s cries into nothingness.

The red of the boy’s blood gushing outwards like a flood of sin trying to catch and mark his killer.

The shock of blue from his irises as they stared up lifelessly from the ground.

“Excuse me, sir, are you alright?”

The hesitant syllables somehow fight their way through Rio’s bleak reverie, causing him to lift his head up towards the sound and almost jump right out of his skin as his eyes meet blue.

Not the same shade. Darker. Warmer.

But blue.

 _Fuck_. The colour hits him with the force of two bullets.

“You don’t look very well. Would you… like me to get you a glass of water or something?”

Her voice is low but smooth, laced with a softness that cuts straight though to his core. Strawberry blonde locks fall gently just above the pair of magnets freezing him in place.

He can still feel the chaos tearing through his veins - emanating from the gold plated gun stuffed in his waistband - and suddenly he can’t be here anymore. Can’t meet this wide-eyed gaze that’s been locked on his for the past God-knows-how-long anymore.

Can’t see blue alive and concerned when he just left it cold and void somewhere in oblivion.

She’s looking at him like he’s on the brink of madness. He thinks maybe he is.

Then she blinks and snaps the cord that he’s sure would have wound around his neck and strangled him had she stared a second longer.

He rips his eyes away from hers, clears his suddenly constricted throat, and barely chokes out a hasty, “Nah, I’m good, ma.”

Heart jumping a rhythm half way out his chest, he strides for the door, swinging his head down towards the monochrome laminate, but not before catching a glimpse of the name tag pinned to her uniform.

 _Elizabeth_.

*

It takes him fifteen nights to find the balls to go back. Another six after that to stop being a weak bitch and actually walk in.

Sometimes, his nightmares end with the boy’s blood soaking up from the warehouse floor and into every one of Rio’s pores until he wakes up clawing at his face and gasping for air.

Other times, they end with vultures gauging out his eyes with their beaks while he screams for relief from the incessant pain but finds none, not even when he wakes up, sweat-drenched and wheezing, but thank God at least _seeing_ the white ceiling of his room.

But often the horrors don’t even have the courtesy to wait until nightfall to creep up and smother him.

Only last week during a drop downtown under the heat of the blazing midday sun, Rio’s nerves almost shot him to hell when a car backfired on the street up ahead. For a moment, he was transported back to the warehouse, feet edging on the precipice of a darkness he knew he had to accept sooner or later.

When he snapped back to the present, he zoned in on a slightly bemused client and a decidedly unimpressed partner, Marcel.

_“Yo, Rio, man, what’s goin’ on in that head of yours?” Marcel had asked on the drive back, irritation and concern peppering his words in equal measure._

_Fingers squeezing the side of the passenger seat as a wave of nausea rushed through him again, Rio had replied, “It ain’t nothing’. You don’t gotta worry.”_

_“Yeah well it better be nothin’. The next drop’s with Omar and you know he’ll cap you faster than your pansy ass can finish up your daydream if you slip. Stay sharp, Rio.”_

_Marcel hadn’t moved his eyes from the road, but Rio felt the weight of his loaded gaze nonetheless. He was slipping, having to catch himself more often these days._

_He had to reclaim some order._

So, after almost a month of broken sleep, punctured by screams and shots and bleach, Rio walks back through the doors of the diner that night and finds the same back booth, looking around warily.

His gaze skips over a young couple three tables ahead before skimming past greasy ketchup bottles and creased menus to finally lock on to what he’d been seeking out.

The diner looks different in the light of day. _She_ looks different in the light of day. All poised movements and efficient strides, as if she hadn’t ripped his very bones to shreds just by looking at him only a few weeks ago.

She is practically floating, completely untouched by their encounter that night while he sits here and drowns and he can’t quite smother the jolt of resentment that blossoms inside him as he watches her wipe down the tables, the space between her eyebrows slightly creasing in concentration.

Her face had burned itself onto his retinas and hadn’t given him even a hint of peace. She is wrapped up with that night in his head, with that feeling of complete loss and emptiness that had filled his insides as he’d trekked through the storm to this booth that night.

He has to face it - has to face her – has to take back control or else he’ll be monumentally fucked. Reputation is everything, and it’s only a matter of time before his crumbles into dust if he keeps blanching at the sound of fucking car horns in front of his clients.

The boy was just a body, and she is just a girl. He just needs to lay them both to rest.

If he proves to himself he can interact with her without falling to pieces, then he can move the fuck on.

_Just get it over with. She ain’t shit._

Just as he’s about to flag her over to his booth, the bell at the front of the diner rings as a tall man with too much bravado, and not nearly enough self-awareness if his stars and stripes bomber jacket is anything to go by, swaggers through the door.

His ‘may the force be with you’ snapback is placed at the exact angle Rio knows from experience only white college frat dicks have perfected, and his gangly limbs knock over a napkin stand as he bounds over to Elizabeth.

Rio lets out a disparaging scoff _. What a trip._

“Bethie! You look so damn cute in that little uniform. Go on and give me a twirl!” His voice is obnoxiously loud and gratingly nasally in a way that Rio’s sure has the opposite effect on women than its owner clearly believes it does.

Eyes frantically roving around the half full diner lest anyone witness the spectacle, she whispers, “Dean! What are you doing here? I don’t get off until eight today, you know that.”

Elizabeth, to her credit, seems more embarrassed than smitten when Dean responds by pulling out a bunch of garish sunflowers and shoves them in her now very flushed face.

“I know babe, but I just thought I’d swing by and like, surprise you. Why don’t you ask to leave early today and we can catch a movie together. You know you want to…,” he says with a pout that reminds Rio of those overblown puffer fish from those nature shows his abuelita used to get him to record on the DVR.

Rio watches with mild interest as Elizabeth sighs and moves on to the next table, spraying it with cleaning fluid and wiping it markedly more aggressively than she had before.

“Dean, I can’t just blow off work like that. Plus, I’ve got to pick up Annie from Ruby’s straight after my shift so I can’t see you tonight either. Rain check?”

“Ah come on, Annie’s old enough to spend a couple hours on her own by now,” he whines.

“She’s eleven.”

“Beth, you need to slow down. I’m sure your mom can – “

He cuts himself off when she contorts her features into a sharp, almost scolding look. Dean seems to get the hint, backing down with palms held up in mock surrender.

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry. I’ll just, like, call you tomorrow or something then? My mom keeps bugging me to get you two in a room so she can talk through wedding colour schemes and cake flavours. You know how she is.” He lets out a self-deprecating sound that comes out more as a nervous exhale than the wry chuckle Rio assumes he’s aiming for.

At this, Elizabeth’s shoulders slump and her voice lacks the edge it previously had when she answers, “Yeah, Dean, that sounds lovely. Tell her I’ll swing by tomorrow for lunch, okay?”

“Sure, babe. And, hey, just think, in a couple of months you won’t even have to work here anymore. We’ll have so much more time for each other.”

“Yeah, that’ll be amazing.” Her wistful tone doesn’t quite match her slightly drawn expression, though the discrepancy seems to go unnoticed by Dean, who moves his lovesick face closer to hers for a kiss.

Her eyes suddenly lock on to Rio’s from across the diner, flashing with acute recognition. She turns her head last minute, Dean catching her cheek as a result and releasing a gormless laugh that makes Rio grimace.

He waves a last goodbye before leaving, and Rio tenses as she purposefully makes her way toward him, cleaning utensils all but forgotten on the table.

She is seemingly shy now after realising he probably witnessed her less than enthused reception of her apparent fiancé, such a stark contrast to her usually preppy professional disposition.

“Hi. Um…Sorry you had to see that, it’s just one of those days, you know. Can I take your order?”

Rio’s fists are clenched tight beneath the table as he fixes her with a gaze filled with no small amount of the animosity he irrationally felt earlier on toward her carefree manner.

Despite his silence and raised eyebrow, she ploughs on, “I could get you a sandwich if you like?”

“I’m not much of a sandwich guy.” He maintains an unnerving gaze aimed straight at her and is pleased to notice how it makes her nervous.

He sees her chew on a thought before steeling herself to continue speaking.

“This might sound a little weird, but I remember you from the other night and I’ve seen you hang around outside the diner sometimes. This is the first time you’ve come in, though. Since then, I mean.” Her voice is hedging, a little tentative, and for some reason it only incenses him further.

The ‘then’ she’s referring to really is no business of hers. Who does she think she is probing into his life like that?

“Was there a question in that or you just lettin’ me know you like watching me?”

At his gruff reply, she blushes a deep scarlet and dips her head briefly down towards her shoes. He’s momentarily struck by how it makes her look so much younger, like a nervous schoolgirl. It’s more apparent to him then, how she usually appears as if half the world is weighing on her back with those brisk movements and frequent deep sighs.

 “I’m just saying, it seems like you’ve got something weighing on your mind. You should talk about it instead of bottling it all up.”

“To you?”

“Excuse me?” She starts.

“I should talk about it to you?”

She has a small smile as she shrugs, “Why not? I’m a good listener and it’s a slow day here, so.”

At this, Rio scoffs humourlessly as he mocks, “What, you gonna paint my nails and braid my hair while you at it too?” He spits it out with a tilt of his head but she remains undeterred, the left corner of her mouth tilting up ever so slightly in a barely there smirk.

Through squinted eyes, Rio regards her from head to toe as she pushes her hair out of her face and places a hand with chipped rose pink nails on her hip.

She strikes him as being someone who’s impatient with the mundane, always walking around as if she’s burning through a mental checklist way too detailed to be healthy.

_Definitely needs to get laid. By someone other than a goon like frat dick._

She’s quietly tenacious too, not easily deterred by his deliberately rough demeanour and hardened appraisal.

He can just tell she’s all doe eyes and compliance until she’s not. He wants to hit those hard lines, those jagged ones she’s hiding beneath just to prove he’s not the only one who’s a little fucked up.

To prove that those dreams where her eyes judge him and pull him into madness as he hovers over the boy’s limp body have no business affecting him the way that they do.

She’s hanging by a thread already; he wants to see her break.

Because then she’s nothing, just another person in this city to pass through and forget.

So he asks, “You really wanna know?”

“Sure,” she shrugs.

Licking his lips, he leans forward as she tilts her head down toward his in a conspiratorial way.

“Alright, that night you first saw me? I just came from killin’ a guy. Yeah, I came back today ‘cause I can’t stop thinking about it and you remind me of it all.”

There’s a beat.

Then she throws her head back and lets out the brightest laugh he’s ever heard. It’s full and rich, some of the notes catching stardust on their way out, the way the sound twinkles in the air between them somehow dissipating the anger he felt and replacing it with a strange desire to bottle up the tune to keep all for himself.

She leans a hand on the edge of the table as she wipes her eye and catches her breath, and Rio leans back, unsure of what to make of her and caught off guard by her display. Against his better judgement he thinks he’d like to see it again.

“Oh my God, that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all week. You just sounded so deadpan I actually believed you for a moment.”

She’s still lightly chuckling as she straightens herself up again with a sniff. “Alright, you don’t have to tell me. But can I at least get you something to drink?”

The remnants of a smile are still kissing her face, from the slight scrunch of her nose to the upward lift of her mouth as she speaks. Rio finds himself momentarily at a loss for words, still ensnared in whatever magic she’d thrown his way with that bright, open-spirited burst of hers.

He clears his throat while tossing up his hood, getting to his feet before turning to face her. His eyes travel over the contours of her face as her hand which had been poised to write his order slowly lowers between them.

Rio can’t help but lean in a little closer until his nose almost grazes the soft waves framing her curiosity filled gaze. He sees rather than hears her breath catch and thinks _good, let’s see how she likes feeling caught._

But instead of recoiling away as he had expected her to do, Rio could have sworn she sways in a little closer, his skin beneath his hoodie practically purring at the almost contact.

He nods towards the monstrosity of a bouquet she’d been gifted by frat dick, currently splayed on a nearby table directly in the sun. “Make sure you put ‘em in water, yeah? Be a shame to see such beauty waste away like that, don’t you think?”

She lets out a quiet breath as he steps back and leaves, every cell in his body focused on absolutely _not_ glancing back to where she stands.

The subtle scent of vanilla and something light and intoxicating follows him to his next drop and home nonetheless. He can’t help but feel as if that control he’d been hoping to regain had only slipped further out of his grasp.

*

That night, and every night for the next week, Rio dreams of her and the warehouse in a new way.

He still winds up with his gun pointed at the boy, but when he pulls the trigger, he releases not a bullet but a laugh.

Her laugh. It dances around the warehouse and tangles itself in his skin, the sweet scent of vanilla with a zing of citrus flooding his senses in a sensual wave of _something_.

Soon, the boy is laughing along too, blood streaming from his mouth in some sick replica of a Halloween Joker mask. A shock of blue as Rio shakes his head to regain some clarity always jolts him awake, his stomach a strange mix of heady regret and a deep-set, simmering intrigue.

And then once, it ends with her red lips kissing the mouth of his gun whilst looking straight at him as his fingers push back her hair, the boy not even registering in his brain. He practically slams the shower dial straight to freezing when he wakes up from that one.

_What the fuck is wrong with me?_

_*_

Some mornings, when he stands in front of his bathroom sink shaving away the scruff of the previous day, Rio’s hands shake so much he has to stop completely lest his face becomes zig-zagged with red.  It takes him so long to finish that he eventually decides to just grow it out.

He takes to shoving his hands inside his jacket pockets during deals too, or clasping them behind his back to hide the tremors.

The fog that descends when he remembers what his hands have done swirls around, clouding in and out of his brain for amounts of time he can’t even measure anymore.

But then the time between fogs starts to last longer than the episodes themselves, and with every new deal and nod of approval from more experienced players, the guilt that usually feeds on him temporarily ebbs to the periphery.

He repeats the same mantra every time he feels the panic rising in his chest _. I did what had to be done._ A necessary evil to make the strides he’s taking today, to enforce the code he lives and will probably die by: no debt can go unpaid.

The tides are shifting. Is he ready?

“Penny for your thoughts.”

The voice hits him like a bucket of ice thrown down his shirt and quickly triggers Rio’s default deceptively disengaged expression to wash over his face and mask his dark train of thought.

Glancing up sharply, Rio sees a black woman with thick framed glasses and a sceptical arch to her eyebrows as she eyes him warily.

“You were staring at the poor pepper shaker so intensely I thought it was gonna explode. Wait…you don’t actually believe you have Jedi mind powers, right?”

At his blank expression, the lady – Ruby, he picks up from her name tag – sags her shoulders in relief.

“Oh, thank God. I can only take one crazy ass sci-fi loon at a time and believe me that position is well and truly filled for the foreseeable future. Regrettably.”

As she mutters the last word under her breath, a vague memory of a Star Wars snapback and ugly, loud sunflowers dances on the edge of his mind as Rio connects the dots and purses his lips to catch his mouth from shaping into an involuntary smirk.

“So then, what? You a trainee police officer on some rookie stake-out? Sad loner looking for a new friend?” She hesitates. “Creepy stalker waiting for your target to arrive?”

He finally bites. “What’re you talking about?”

Dark eyes narrowed in indignation at his short tone, Ruby replies, “Look, I’m just trynna figure out what you’re doing here. You don’t talk or order anything, and I’m pretty sure this is the third time this past month I’ve seen your skinny ass in this booth.”

It’s an exaggeration. This is only the second time he’s returned since a certain blonde infiltrated his subconscious with a tune his dreams won’t let him forget. The first time she hadn’t been here, and he pretended not to notice the stab of disappointment in his gut.

Taking his top lip between his teeth, Rio squints at Ruby for a moment before conceding his pride isn’t as powerful as his curiosity.

“Where’s your friend at?” At her lack of recognition, he impatiently elaborates, “Blonde. Works here.”

“Shona?”

“Nah.”

“Gracie?”

“ _No._ ”

“Beth?”

“Maybe.” He aims for nonchalance but judging by the pursed lipped, unconvinced, bitch-please expression currently being levelled at him, he doesn’t think he quite nailed it.

“She’s – wait, how do you even know her anyway? Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t exactly seem like an origami enthusiast who’s signed up for craft classes on Fridays.”

He only offers a shrug in response. Message clear - it’s none of her business.

Eyes rivalling the size of saucers and lips barely moving, she whispers to herself, “Oh sweet Jesus. Definitely a stalker.”

Reverting back to a normal volume with a tinge of unease underlying her words, she says, “Beth doesn’t work here anymore. In fact, she doesn’t even live in this town anymore.”

At his raised eyebrows, she continues, “Yeah that girl is a goner.  Like totally would never have even thought about her existence ever again had you not brought her up. She is like absolutely nowhere in this vicinity right now. Ha! Probably not even in Detroit. Or the state! There’s no way of knowing, really, so you might as well just - ”

“Ruby! I’m gonna head out! If I have to do another minute of inventory I’m actually going to –“

Rio swings his head behind toward the voice he’d recognised too quickly for his comfort, just in time to see Elizabeth emerging from a back door behind the diner counter, stopping in her tracks at the sight of him, mouth slightly agape.

Ruby’s sharp whisper cuts through the tension that conspicuously envelopes their bodies at Elizabeth’s arrival.

“Beth! Get back in there! I’m saving your ass from a bloody murder right now!”

If he’d been looking at her, Rio would have been slightly concerned by how far out Ruby’s eyes have bulged from her face in panic. But as it happens, he still finds himself looking back, drawn against his will to the girl regarding him with her bottom lip caught between her teeth.

Her hair is up in a bun, bangs swept neatly to the side and her work blouse buttoned up to modestly cover the pale expanse of her delicate neck and chest.

It’s all so clean-cut and _prim_ it makes his fingers itch to shove his hands _everywhere,_ to unravel her completely so she’d rival the twisted mess of chaos that had rioted through him since that night she first saw him.

Finally, she speaks. “Ruby, honey, calm down. I know him, kind of.” ‘Know’ is a stretch and they all know it, but she says it so convincingly he’s briefly impressed by her poker face.

“ _Kind of_?!”

He ignores Ruby’s incensed outburst, and stands, walking towards the door. “Well, come on, sweetheart, I ain’t got all day,” he throws over his shoulder.

As he leaves the diner, he catches a last line in Ruby’s alarmed shriek, “Now, see, _this_ is why the pretty white girl always dies first in horror movies. Where is the logic? Make it make sense!”

Rio strolls to his car parked on the road around the corner and leans against the hood as he watches her exit the diner and slowly walk up to meet him.

He can’t quite explain why he keeps seeking her out. Just knows that after that night the warehouse and her eyes fucked up his head, for some reason the sight of her leaves him feeling lighter and madder all at once.

But also… _better_ , somehow. Like each meeting is a piece of healing, helping him confront that night instead of burying it in a dark chamber of his mind.

She’s standing in front of him with the edges of a mid-May sunset lazily sprawling out behind her, giving her an ethereal quality that stutters his next intake of breath ever so slightly. There’s a warm glow about her in this light, and he’s taken with the urge to rip her apart again because it’s not right.

It doesn’t fit how she makes him feel.

It’s too soft. Not nearly wild enough. In fact, nothing about her life suits her, from the quaint little diner to the small-town fiancé, the stuffy shirts and composed demeanour, polite smiles and pinned back hair.

Nah. She doesn’t get to walk away from this untouched while his head spins trying to make sense of it all.

“So, mystery man, is this the part when you finally tell me what you want?” He doesn’t know what he expected her to be like towards him after really only two encounters, but the pissed edge to her voice surprises him somewhat.

“Oh you been waiting for me to come back or somethin’?” His words fall out in a lazy drawl that he senses will only spur her annoyance.

“Don’t flatter yourself. It’s just a little tiring how you show up randomly, never saying more than three words or even ordering some food before disappearing again.”

“You bitchin’ ‘cause I don’t order food?”

“This isn’t about the food! It’s about how you sit in that stupid booth and look at me like you want to say something but never do. It’s weird. And annoying.”

She’s pulling at a thread on the coat draped over her arm as she speaks. He zones in on that for a moment before answering.

“I already told you why I keep coming back.”

She scoffs and rolls her eyes up to the sky. “You said you killed a guy. That’s hardly a serious response.”

His tongue runs over the back of his top teeth as he contemplates what to say. “You just remind me of somethin’ is all.”

“Something bad?”

“Somethin’…strange.”

“Oh. Just what every girl wants to hear.” She shifts her weight to her right foot, looking at him with something close to exasperation.

“Look, I have to get home. I don’t really have time to figure out your riddles. Besides, my last shift is at the end of summer and by your schedule, I guess this is the last time we’ll meet.”

A glimmer from a diamond on her finger as the setting sun hits her hand while she starts to move around him fills in the gaps her words create. Without his permission, a burst of panic jolts through him at the realisation that they’re on borrowed time. It makes no sense but as much as it shreds him, seeing her also soothes in a way he can’t replicate with anything else.

If she’s gone, he’ll have to keep facing that night alone. The thought in itself causes Rio’s hand to shoot out on its own volition, fingers wrapping around her small wrist as his mouth blurts out a question he suddenly desperately needs the answer to.

“What do you want?”

“From you?”

“From life.”

She looks up at him, closer than she was before, further than he wants her. His hands are still on her wrist as her eyes trace the shapes of clouds above them while she considers her answer. Her mind seems to whizz through a thousand responses before settling on one. She looks up at him, something about the edges of her softening as she speaks, voice just above a whisper.

“I want to feel safe.”

“From?” His own voice is much deeper but just as quiet for fear of pushing her away before she can clarify.

“I don’t know. I just…I want to find some place where it feels like I can breathe easy. Like nothing’s going to collapse on top of me if I don’t keep it all together every second of every day. I guess…I want a home.”

“Fuck that.” The gruff sound of his voice snaps her out of her wistful reverie; if she thought that answer would satisfy him, she was wrong.

“Excuse me?”

“What about after that? After the picket fence and the lawn and the children and the dog? You can’t live wrapped up in cotton wool forever.”

She rips her arm away and steps back to look at him, incredulous. “Who do you think you are? Belittling me like that? It’s not stupid to want stability, to want something to rely on. It’s _human_.”

“I never said it wasn’t. I’m sayin' something’s gotta give, darling. You acting like stayin’ in the lines will make you happy but it don’t work like that. No-one feels good when they only live for other people.”

He can tell he’s struck a chord when she averts her eyes to just over his shoulder.

“Yeah, that little dream of yours? It’s nice but…that ain’t it. Not for you.”

“Well since you’ve got it all figured out, what about you, huh? What do _you_ want?”

His replies in a heartbeat. The answer has been the same since he was six years old watching his papa get lowered into the ground and his older sister and abuelita holding each other close, scared out of their wits about losing the roof over their heads. Since he was eleven, thinking they were worth so much more than a leaking ceiling and grocery coupons but feeling useless that he couldn’t provide it.

Since he realised you had to grab what you wanted for yourself because the rules aren’t applied in the same way to everybody.

“I want freedom. I live for me and mine. That’s it.”

“That’s not so different from what I said. We both want to feel safe.”

“Nah, see, you want someone to deal with your problems for you. Drown out the noise, turn a blind eye to all the trouble so long as you get to play happy homes.”

His voice is scornful as he towers over her and he knows he’s pushing it, can practically _feel_ her limits struggling to stretch to accommodate his arrogance but she’s too affected, too enraged to let it go. He wants to see her lose it all.

“Bottom line? You want someone to give you protection; I ain’t afraid to earn it myself.”

She looks as if he’s slapped the wind out of her. He can’t help it, he steps even closer, not wanting to miss a single second of her falling apart.

“Please,” she scoffs, “You don’t know who I am or what I’ve been through. Some of us don’t have much choice about how we live so we do the best with what we’re dealt with and we don’t complain.”

Her words are backed with steel, something hard in her eyes as she speaks as though she knows something he doesn’t, as though he’s young and foolish for thinking he can have it all. For thinking he can control his life’s direction.

Maybe she’s right.

Or maybe she just needs a push to see it his way.

“You think you’re tough? That’s funny. All I see is a boy who thinks he’s more than what he is. You’re not even close to who you want to be.”

There’s a flame that ignites in him when he takes in how her whole body seems to thrum with some invisible electric pulse as she steps closer and spits out her words, voice low and tugging inside him, breathing new life to the flame.

“’Least I’m not lying to myself ‘bout what I want.”

She’s breathing heavily, chest brushing his with the movement and she’s positively _burning_ , emitting some energy he wants to harness just to see her explode this way again.

She could really be something if she lets herself. He could help her. She could help him. Keep the demons at bay with the way she lights him up and pulls him out of that place in his head he can’t afford to get lost in alone anymore.

Perhaps they’d both turn to ashes, not knowing what to do with this heat.

Or perhaps he just wants her.

He dips his head down, eyes locked on nothing but hers, searching through and trying to name each emotion that races through them.

Fury, envy…desire?

When he speaks, his voice envelopes the words with silk, coaxing, “Why’d you follow a stranger out here if there ain’t a part of you cravin’ a thrill, hmm? Tell me, mami, who you livin’ for?”

He’ll think back to this exact moment so many times the details will start to blur, making him dizzy in his memory’s haze, but he’ll never be able to pin-point who snaps first.

Right now, all he knows is her mouth on his, hot and fervent, too much but he wants more. They start a feverish dance as she pushes forwards and upwards, small hands squeezing his shoulders in anger or want - he doesn’t care enough to differentiate.

His arms wrap around her waist as he turns them so her back hits the driver’s side of his car and _God_ the moan that leaves her throat is enough to make every nerve in him shatter. Then she’s everywhere, fingers down his chest, scraping his shaved scalp, pulling him in deeper, as she has done from that first night.

Kissing her feels like absolution.  

She’s keening, practically moulding herself against him as his tongue licks up her throat, teeth breaking skin as she releases a sound that shoots through him with a bolt, bone deep.

Her tongue is in his mouth again and she brings her hands up to wrap around his neck, pressing hard enough to make his blood rush down and his fingers bruise her thighs in a way that only makes her pull him impossibly closer.

He can’t breathe but he doesn’t want to. Would rather stay wrapped up in her in this intoxicating explosion until they both disintegrate and fall into nothing.

His body betrays him as he’s forced to pull himself away, lungs begging for any pocket of air to greedily take in, gasping.

It feels like he’s just barely survived a war.

He has to steady his hands against the roof of his car as the air washes over him, heart a riot in his chest. He takes in the hot pink flush high on her cheeks, the red swell of her lips, the angry scratch marks his stubble left down her neck.

Wild tendrils of hair frame her wide gaze that bores into his own hooded one. He can’t help himself, hands moving on their own accord and pushing them away so he can see her face clearer, the action surprising them both in its softness after what had just happened between them.

She swallows as she drops her clenched fists from the front of his shirt, mouth forming the shape of a word he never gets to hear as a car horn blares loudly from a near distance. She jumps, head whipping around to follow the sound and he hears a breathless, “ _Shit_.”, as she snaps away from the cage he’d made around her and picks up her coat from the ground at his feet.

Her body is trembling as she backs away from him, face terrified but longing all at once. He can’t think of any words but really what is there left to say?

Except, “Can’t run forever, darlin’.”

She’s gone before his blood cools down enough for him to drive, the bruises on the side of his neck the only tangible proof she was even real.

*

“Hey, yo, Rio, man, what’s up with that new dude? What’s his name, Devil?” Marcel asks three months later from the back seat of Rio’s new black sedan, in between bites of cheesy fries and salsa.

“Demon. And he’s gonna be the muscle for our next few drops. Can’t afford to take no chances with this new crew we’re teamin’ up with, feel me?”

“Yeah, yeah, he just seems a little…quiet that’s all. Kinda unnerving, you know?”

“Well that is kind of the point.”

“And the skull tatts? Homeboy really ain’t playin’ with the whole I’ll-kill-you-while-your-momma-and-children-weep-and-force-them-to-watch vibes.” Marcel punctuates his point with a loud bite of nachos as Rio pulls up outside his apartment.

“Yeah well with the shit we’ve got planned, you’re gonna be grateful we got someone like him on side. We’re moving up, Marcel. There’s big game in fake paper.”

Marcel sighs deeply. “I just hope you know what you’re doin’ with Omar, bruh. You got balls, I’ll give you that. Thanks for the ride, man. Catch you tomorrow.”

“No problem.”

As he drives away, Rio’s mind wonders to the warehouse as it is wont to do in the rare moments he gets to himself now. It seems like a lifetime since he first sold his soul like that, the months between then and now gradually dulling the emotion that threatened to wash over and drown him like it did those first few weeks.

Now, he dreams, but it barely skims his consciousness when he wakes. Something in him has hardened and he’d almost feel bad were it not for the dividends he’d been paid ever since.

Rio was _in._ He’d proved he has the business acumen but also the steel it takes to be a big player. And he has big plans about to be set in motion, plans that could propel him into the upper echelons if he plays his hand correctly.

There have been others since. One in an infested motel room. Another in the back of a seven-seater Rover. He’d long since accepted that blood on his hands is necessary if he wants to get where he needs to go.

It’s all part of the game.

Still, he’d lost himself in a different woman after each time. Brown, hazel, green. Never blue.

His train of thought has led him to a familiar diner, still open by the looks of things, despite it being just past midnight.

He doesn’t know why he steps through the door once again, won’t admit to himself what or who he’s searching for as his eyes take in the empty diner and upturned stools. Can’t stop his chest from clenching a little as he sees vaguely familiar cursive handwriting displaying the specials menu on the chalk board he’d read a thousand times from outside in those days before he found the nerve to walk in again.

It just all seems like it’s from a lifetime ago, when things were simpler but less satisfying. Before Rio knew exactly how far he’s willing to go to reach heights that seemed unattainable to him back then.

He hears a crash and a curse from the store cupboard to his left and before he can process it, his feet take him toward the sound.

She’s there – of course she’s there – on the ground cursing up a storm as she picks up fallen spice jars and plastic cups, a mop lying abandoned a couple of feet away. Rio shuffles in the doorway, torn between bolting out and making a quip about her sailor’s mouth, when she turns her head, “Sorry, we’re clo –“

She does a double take and stands so abruptly, she knocks a new shelf of packaged napkins to the floor beside her.

Rio takes her in, from her messily plaited hair and the Walkman headphones around her neck, to her coffee and mustard stained knee-length apron, down her pale as snow legs, and finally – his eyebrows raise in amusement – to her mismatched socks, pink and green.

When he meets her gaze again she’s blushing so furiously his smirk becomes a full blown wolf grin.

“Need a hand in here, darlin'?”

“No. Thank you. I’m just cleaning up. We closed ten minutes ago.”

Rio tilts his head toward the door and says, “Door’s still unlocked. You really should be more careful. Get all sorts roaming around at this time.”

His voice is a low drawl as he stalks closer to her, stepping over plastic spoons and faded menus.

“Is that right?”

“Mmm.”

She pushes her shoulders back and purses her lips in some show of defiance, he assumes. “Well, I can handle myself. I’m tougher than I look.”

He lets out a deep chuckle, “I don’t doubt it, sweetheart,” as she stalks passed him towards the door, to throw him out, he guesses.

His lazy long strides follow her and she turns, eyes searching his face for what he doesn’t know, but she seems to find her answer as she absorbs the strong set of his shoulders and hard confidence in his gait that’s so conspicuously different from the hunched mess she’d first seen him as.

She takes a step toward him then, tilting up her head to look him dead in the eyes.

When she speaks, there’s a slight teasing tone to her voice and it coils up his spine and scratches down it again in a manner he’d be lying if he said didn’t make the hairs on his arm stand on end in anticipation.

“It’s been a while. I didn’t think you’d show again. I mean, I didn’t even see you weirdly loitering around outside or silently brooding in a booth without ever even ordering so much as a piece of lettuce.”

She’s close enough now that he can hear the faint _wham, bam, thank you, ma’am_ playing from her headphones. Her eyes travel down to his throat which now sports a proud eagle, wings spread in flight, as he feels the memory of his own voice echoing in the space between them.

_I want freedom._

 She follows his Adam’s apple as he swallows.

“Shit got busy, I guess. How’re those sunflowers doin’?”

Elizabeth snaps her eyes back to his at that, her bottom lip disappearing into her mouth as she contemplates the question, what he’s really asking dawning on her immediately.

“They died. Guess I didn’t pay them enough attention.”

Rio’s eyes flicker down to her left hand where he clocks a glimmering band around her fourth finger. He purses his lips.

“Seems to me you still trynna revive ‘em anyway. Thought you’d be smarter than that, Elizabeth.” It’s the first time he’s said her name aloud and the syllables feel good as they dance around his tongue and lightly graze his teeth.

The air feels thick, like in those dreams when he wakes up in a cold sweat gasping for oxygen to hit his lungs, except this time, the lack of it feels sweet. He thinks he wouldn’t mind suffocating this way.

Through the vanilla haze of his mind, he catches her reply, husky with the quiet volume she speaks at now.

“You don’t know me.”

“No?”

“No.”

“You tell him yet?”

“Nothing to tell.”

And with that, she moves her head closer and closer until he can feel her soft breath caress his collarbone. She closes her eyes and her lashes brush the feathers of his inked eagle. It takes everything in him not to grab her by the neck just to see if she still tastes as sweet as she smells.

But he wants to see how far she’ll go.

He’s just about to rethink his strategy, when small fingers push his chin slightly up and to the side and a hot tongue licks a path from the base of a wing right to the tip below his ear, which she bites sharply. A red flame climbs up from the base of his belly, weaves through his rib cage and grasps at his chest as he grabs a fistful of her hair and pulls her head back and up.

Chest to chest, his vision is consumed with blue as she tiptoes up, nose almost nudging his in the process, small hands squeezing his shoulders.

“Now, like I said, we closed ten minutes ago. You’re welcome back tomorrow.”

Rio sees a gleam of mischief in her eyes, but it’s overshadowed by the glint of her left hand. He recalls her voice saying something about a last shift before she ripped him apart what feels like aeons ago.

“Mhmm. Somethin’ tells me you ain’t gon’ be here though,” he ventures.

She lets go of him as her heels meet the ground again and she sighs as she looks up at him, bangs slightly obscuring her bright gaze which holds all the answers he needs.

“Look after yourself, Rio. Maybe I’ll see you again some time.”

His name sounds like a promise, like sin on her lips, too good for him to even wonder in that moment how she got the information.

He gives her one last nod and walks out of the diner a final time.

As the cool air hits his warm skin, he goes to pull out his car keys but instead his fingers wrap around something long and bumpy.

Brows furrowed in confusion, he pulls from his back pocket a string of white pearls. When he glances back though, the diner lights have been turned off and the sign flipped to ‘closed’.

Biting back a grin, Rio puts the key in the ignition, car purring to life around him. He pulls away, mind racing through his plans for the coming weeks, fingers lightly tracing the pearls wrapped around them.

**Author's Note:**

> Aaand breathe. Thank you for making it through to the end!
> 
> So this is the very first piece of writing that I've ever let see the light of day but something about Brio just crawls under my skin and refuses to be ignored. I blame Manny and Christina's insane chemistry and ridiculously good looks.
> 
> I wanted to capture both of them on the cusp of decisions that shape who they are at the start of the show and intended for it to be a quick snapshot of time but clearly these two had other plans, lol. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I'll go back to real life now (and maybe some Brio gif sets)


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